Elections 2007: Mayor Pro Tem or king for a day?

Yes, it's true that Councilman Ed Adkison is not running for election. At least not this year. But yesterday he was Mayor Pro Tem, and there's probably those who will be relieved when his stint ends on June 30.

When Adkison rules the roost, he keeps the police officers assigned to the back of the chambers on their toes so to speak in terms of ordering them to expel people that upset him and other council members.

There was that unfortunate incident earlier this year when Adkison, gavel in hand, ordered the police to expel four city residents including an 89-year-old woman from the city council chambers. Apparently the city council allegedly tried to get them arrested and even prosecuted by calling all over town looking for assistance from the police department and even the Riverside County District Attorney's office, but fate intervened in the form of a deputy chief who used his brains.

Last night, it happened again.


The city council meeting last night began with public comment and one gentleman walked up to the podium to talk about problems he was having in his neighborhood that he needed the police to assist him with. He had appeared at several meetings frustrated with these issues and received little assistance or acknowledgment from the city council.

This time, he did get their attention. He exceeded the three-minute speaking requirement and Mayor Pro Tem Ed Adkison got out of his seat, as did Councilman Frank Schiavone and they conferred with City Attorney Gregory Priamos at one side. Councilman Dom Betro almost left his seat, then stayed in it talking with Councilman Andrew Melendrez. Councilman Art Gage sat in his chair and just watched as the other council members particularly "Fred" walked to where two police officers were stationed in the back of the council chambers.

But then again, Gage, the council's appointed villain of choice, usually is the calmest one on the dais when these things happen.

The officers walked up to the man, and one of them, Felix Soria, spoke with him gently while patting him on his back. The two officers walked with the man outside where they were joined by Deputy Chief Pete Esquivel, another deputy chief who also used his brains. Esquivel spoke with the man about the problems in his neighborhood which was in the La Sierra area to see what the department could do to assist him. The same problems that the city council even his own representative who was either Nancy Hart or Steve Adams couldn't bother to listen to, let alone assist him with.

Esquivel and the two officers provided the man outside the chambers with the ears that he had hoped to get from his elected leadership. You would think that at least during an election year, he would have received that from the dais!

Several city council members appeared disappointed that the man wasn't dragged off in handcuffs and leg irons by the officers who looked like they wished they were some place else. And it's hard to think of the positive actions taken by deputy chiefs, Dave Dominguez and Esquivel when faced with these situations and not be thankful that they are not "at will" employees. Incidents like this one unfortunately show why it's important that the labor rights both enjoy which are part and parcel of their current classified positions remain protected especially when city government and/or city management orders them or otherwise compels them to perform a duty that is not within the parameters of their jobs especially in terms of the powers of arrest.

As the man walked by me, I complimented him on his speech and told him I'm sorry that if he had nearly gotten arrested for making it and I didn't want him to feel that he had been invalidated by everybody. He answered back that he was willing to get arrested for making the speech because the problems that he had reported at previous meetings weren't addressed. That's a pretty sad state of affairs in Riverside.

I thought it was pretty damn ironic that someone would go up and ask for more assistance from the city in terms of providing police officers, who would express his frustration at the very real issue of inadequate staffing of police officers in this city especially in the face of the Riverside Renaissance and then face possible arrest for it.

Maybe next time, he should appear in front of the dais wearing a three-piece suit and carrying a checkbook. Maybe next week, he should introduce himself and say he's from Orange County.

When Mayor Ron Loveridge is out of town and another city council member takes his place as chair of the meeting, it really provides you with an appreciation for how skillful Loveridge is at leading a city council meeting and even reining in several council members when they start yelling "point of order" at people at the dais for doing such outrageous things as addressing them individually by name or criticizing something they have done.

Does Loveridge cut people off as they approach the end of their comment period? Yes, and he appears especially eager to cut off female speakers than those who are male, but he doesn't loudly complain and order police officers to escort people away including elderly women. Most of those who are upset about problems affecting their lives who bring them to the council walk away of their own volition when Loveridge runs the dais.

Not so with Mayor Pro Tems like Adkison and Adams.

And whose bright idea was it to give Adkison a gavel to play with? And indeed he did, at the beginning of the meeting. If Adkison is indeed auditioning to become the city's next mayor, he needs to put away the gavel because the current mayor's never used one in 13 years on the bench.






News is spreading that the Press Enterprise is preparing to publish the second in a series of ongoing news articles on the plight of Councilman Dom Betro's campaign signs. Standing in line are the other political candidates who are waiting for a chance to tell their stories about missing and vandalized campaign signs. Unfortunately, their waits will probably be long ones.

The wait won't be nearly as long for Save Riverside when it comes to being spanked by the Press Enterprise.


Today, there was an article published about the mud-slinging emails that have allegedly been going around because after all, this is election time. As usual, the Press Enterprise points fingers in only one direction. The newspaper certainly seems intent on spanking Save Riverside, an organization of people who organize through the internet by blaming it for the onslaught of emails that are probably plaguing nearly everyone in the odd-numbered wards who has an acquaintance with a computer.

Nobody likes getting ambushed with campaign literature around election time. People don't like it piling up in their mail boxes or computerized messages filling up their answering machines. So why would people like it bombarding their email accounts?

How much campaign material ends up in the trash can? How many emails advocating for one candidate or another get deleted as spam?

But what the Press Enterprise, except for the sublime Dan Bernstein, does is not to really address this growing problem and the obvious solution which is to carefully select which messages that you want to send, but instead to scold one party about it.

Any comments about "closeted lesbians" and William "Rusty" Bailey's military record are over the top, as are the unmentioned missives about nasty postings about Donna Doty-Michalka's divorce from her first husband before his death or statements apparently made by Chris MacArthur's campaign workers that Harry Kurani is from Iran as if that were true and if so, as if it were a bad thing and reason not to vote for him.

Not only are postings like these offensive no matter who is doing them, but they do little to get any constructive point across on exactly what the candidates stand for and what they will bring to the dais good or bad if they get elected. That's the information that voters particularly those on the fence are really looking for and even with ballots mailed out, there's still a lot of indecision in the odd-numbered wards. It's not like they're receiving objective coverage from the local press which clearly favors its own endorsed candidates.

But then labeling a candidate as the "crazy lady" or better yet, "crazy bitch" who will ruin Riverside as we know is also highly unfair and sexist, even if the Press Enterprise is very selective in the candidates whose right to due process it chooses to advocate for during this election. So even while Letitia Pepper herself has been a target of some nastiness, she alone is being asked by the Press Enterprise to call off the bloggers.

So if there's ugly behavior going around, it's all over the place and that's where the attention should be focused.

Counter the coverage of this issue with the scant coverage given the latest ethics complaint filed against Betro by the Press Enterprise which was detailed in a single brief. Hardly surprising.


But then it's too busy putting the head of Save Riverside on trial and Pepper, tying the two together in one neatly wrapped package even though Save Riverside hasn't endorsed any candidate at all, let alone Pepper and she's not really affiliated with that group as far as is known.



(excerpt)



Paul Odekirk, a 43-year-old Riverside native, is among those using the Internet to rail against the city and to motivate voters. He sent recent e-mails condemning the vandalism of Betro signs and complaining about the removal of Pepper campaign signs.

He's involved with Save-Riverside, a group of residents campaigning against the re-election bids of Betro and Councilman Steve Adams. The group has fired off e-mails to media, residents and others around the area, whether they want them or not.

Odekirk said the members of his group believe they have an obligation to bring up issues of concern, especially because the City Council is in the process of implementing a massive $1.2 billion public-projects package dubbed the Riverside Renaissance.

"Sometimes people have to stand up and say something," said Odekirk, who started his Internet campaign about a month ago when he created a MySpace page. "We're such a quiet community. People have to stand up for the places where they grew up."

Odekirk, a self-employed antiques dealer, said he moved back to Riverside just last weekend from Moreno Valley. He said he has re-registered to vote in the city's Ward 1, but he won't reveal which candidate he plans to vote for.

His group, Save-Riverside, has not endorsed any City Council candidate, but Odekirk said several Ward 1 candidates, including Pepper, are members of his organization.

Pepper has been a vocal critic of Betro and the City Council and has not issued any call for local bloggers or Save-Riverside to stop their attacks. Pepper did not return a phone call Tuesday seeking comment on the tactics of the bloggers and Save-Riverside.

Odekirk, who said he has 3,000 people on his e-mail list, said his group always identifies posts that it makes, and that anonymous posts come from elsewhere.






In the middle of the latest intrigue, City Hall buzzed as the city council met in the board room to interview four candidates from two wards to fill two vacancies on the City Police Review Commission including that of former chair, Les Davidson.

Loveridge was a no show but the entire city council was there although the questions that they asked candidates this time around weren't quite up to the level asked at the previous round of interviews in February.

After three rounds of voting, the city council selected its two commissioners which were Linda Soubirous to represent Ward Four and Arthur J. Santore to represent Ward Six. With these selections, the city council has filled all the openings from the latest wave of resignations from the CPRC.

Attending the interviews were City Attorney Gregory Priamos, City Clerk Colleen Nichols, Asst. City Manager Tom DeSantis and two Riverside Police Department officers.




Debra Lunceford was up first, and she had come to Riverside five years ago and helped her husband run his construction company. She also attended the citizens' academy and joined the Riverside Police Department's citizen patrol for about a year to learn more about the operations of the police department.

She said that the city had given much to her.


"They deserve to have something back," she said.



So Lunceford decided to apply for the CPRC, the mission of which she believed was "justice". She felt that the commission's purpose was to find out what actually happened when it all went down.

Her job would be to "stand in the middle and take it all in".

When Councilman Andrew Melendrez asked her what skills she would bring to the process, Lunceford said two, common sense and logic.


"They always served me well," she said.


She wanted to see the commission expand its powers when asked that question by Councilman Ed Adkison and her response caused some faces to go ashen for just a moment.



"The recommendation of discipline would be in order," she said.


The city council grumbled after her interview about how little city residents knew about the process conveniently forgetting that some of the applicants that they had stumped for including the two newest members had known next to nothing about the commission they are serving on now.


Arthur Santore was up next and he said that he was a 37-year resident of the city and semi-retired. He had graduated from Riverside Community College and owned a plumbing business for 17 years, before working for the University of California, Riverside for 12 1/2 years serving as a union steward.

Santore believed the main purpose of the CPRC was to allow the community to see what a great job the Riverside Police Department was doing and that the public had little understanding. He did admit that sometimes they didn't do their jobs well.


"Sometimes an officer steps over the line but you have to look back to see how that officer got where he is," Santore said.



Linda Soubirous ran for a Riverside County Board of Supervisors position against Bob Buster and was endorsed by the Riverside Police Officers' Association in that election. Her husband, a Riverside County Sheriff's Department, was killed in the line of duty and Soubirous headed a group for survivors of police who were murdered until recently. She married a California Highway Patrol officer and went to school to get a degree in political science.


Soubirous called the CPRC "great P.R." for the police department.

She said she brought a unique perspective to the CPRC, which because she knew first-hand what police officers went through every day. Actually considering that the CPRC currently has five current or retired law enforcement personnel on it out of seven members, that perspective actually makes her part of the crowd.

Still, Soubirous said she would be open-minded when hearing from community members and if they were afraid to come and file complaints, she would urge the commission to do a lot of outreach include holding meetings in every ward.


William Timmons, a former Peace Corps volunteer and current book author said that he had plenty of time to serve on the CPRC and was actually a workaholic. He had served on the Mayor's Commission on Aging but believed that the CPRC would be more "dynamic".

He felt that communication between the police department and the public was very good because no one was storming the police department's headquarters and that the CPRC should not be "a kangaroo court".



After the candidates all departed, the voting took place with very little discussion. It looked like the hardest task for most of the city council members was how to properly fill out a paper ballot.

Here is how the votes were cast.


Ward Four appointment


Dom Betro: No vote cast

Andrew Melendrez: Lunceford

Art Gage: No vote cast

Frank Schiavone: Soubirous

Ed Adkison: Soubirous

Nancy Hart: Soubirous

Steve Adams: Soubirous



Ward Six appointment(first round)

Betro: Santore

Melendrez: Timmons

Gage: No vote

Schiavone: Timmons

Adkison: Timmons

Hart: Santore

Adams: Santore



Vote: 3-3


Since there was a tie vote, the council members conferred for several intense moments and finally decided to back Hart's choice of Santore in a 6-1 vote with Melendrez holding his position on Timmons. When I asked about the flip flop to make sure I had all the votes correctly recorded, Betro sniped that "when it's a tie, we negotiate". No, actually he didn't, since he had not changed his vote to accommodate Hart's wishes but voted for Santore during both rounds.

Gage did not vote for any of the candidates in either ward until the final round. He wasn't satisfied with either of the Ward Six applicants and he didn't feel that Soubirous should have been selected in part because she had in the past accepted campaign contributions from the Riverside County Sheriff's Department's labor union and the RPOA and he was concerned about how the community members would perceive that. In general, Gage said he believes that people with law enforcement backgrounds should not be selected and his philosophy is backed by his voting record on appointments.


The current composition of the CPRC is as follows:


Brian Peacy, Chair: Former Los Angeles Police Department officer and current reserve officer

Jack Brewer: Retired Alcohol and Beverage Control investigator

Jim Ward: Retired state corrections officer

Peter Hubbard: Manager, American Medical Response and currently serves as the point man on a contract between his agency and the police department which addresses training issues. AMR is also serving out a contract with the city for paramedic services.

Steve Simpson: Retired Riverside County Sheriff's Department reserve deputy

Sheri Corral: Current Riverside Community College District police officer

John Brandriff: Works for United States Postal Service





Hush, Hush


As posted, De Santis, sat in on most of the interviews for the CPRC but was he the party responsible for telling librarians at the city's downtown facility to hush, hush? The Press Enterprise took some time away from looking out for the interests of its endorsed candidates to report on the latest episode of what's up with the city's libraries.

Everyone and their dog has heard the stories going around about how De Santis has been spending a lot of time at the library telling them among other things, how to shelve books.

The official author of the memo is Library Director Barbara Custen but the timing of the memo is interesting because it comes soon after another Press Enterprise article where several librarians were complaining about new regulations to fingerprint volunteers including those who are minors. And who was instrumental for pushing that proposal? Officially, the Human Resources Department which is allegedly one of the most micromanaged departments in the city of Riverside since the resignation several years ago of former director, Art Alcaraz. Although apparently, others in the running are alleged to be the police department(where there appears to be this belief that he's trying to run the place), the CPRC(ditto) and the libraries.



(excerpt)



"I am not in any way trying to stifle the staff's freedom of speech," Custen said. "Maybe I was a little hasty and ... perhaps my words in the memo could've been chosen better."

The memo issued in April states: "It is not appropriate, nor acceptable, for staff other than the Department Head to speak with the media or customers regarding policies. ... Deviations from this policy will be cause for discipline."

The Riverside Public Library's main branch in downtown Riverside.
The memo further states "under no circumstances should any Library staff members speak directly to the media or customers regarding the philosophy or effectiveness of library or city of Riverside policies. ... There are no exceptions!"

Custen said that developing policies is done through a democratic process, but once a policy is in place, employees should follow them without public complaint.

The memo comes two days after a published report that highlighted librarians' concerns about a new policy that requires the fingerprinting of young volunteers.

Custen said the memo's timing with the story is coincidental.



Naturally, but some say timing is everything.